The Incredible True Story of Blondy Baruti

by Blondy Baruti

  “Blondy, you have a family here, too,” Terry said. “And we will love you and support you one hundred percent. All we ask is that you do your best and be grateful for the opportunity to chase your dream.”

  “Thank you,” I said. These were words that came easily to me now, and I said them often.

  PATRICK WOULD SOMETIMES TAKE me to a local playground and work with me on rebounding and shooting. He would implore me to be strong. He would encourage me and assure me, and tell me that soon I would be in the NBA. I liked hearing these things; it made me feel good. But then we would go home, and I could sense tension between my cousin and my new family.

  One day in November, shortly after preseason practices had begun, Brandon Blitz pulled me aside. Using Google Translate, he typed out a message.

  “Blondy, I have to ask you something,” he said. It seemed very serious.

  “Okay, Coach.”

  “Do you know what’s going on between your cousin and my parents?”

  I told him I did not. I knew only that they appeared to be distant and unhappy with each other, and that my cousin had not gotten a job, as he had promised.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know,” Brandon explained. He then proceeded to tell me what the Blitzes now believed about Patrick’s background, of his failed attempt at school, and how he had brokered a deal to bring me to Arizona, and how the Blitzes had taken him in because he was homeless. The arrangement was supposed to be temporary, but to the dismay of the Blitzes, it now appeared permanent. Terry and Laurie did not know what to do. And I was caught in the middle.

  As the details of the story unfolded on Google Translate—including the fact that Patrick had gotten the Blitzes to pay for my plane ticket—I felt a surge of anger toward my cousin, and shame for the situation I was in. I felt guilty about accepting the Blitzes’ generosity when it had been established through my cousin’s failures. I didn’t know what to do or say. I looked at Brandon and shook my head.

  “I’m sorry,” I said feebly.

  “It’s okay, Blondy,” he said. “I just thought you should know.”

  After that, I tried not to be a burden to anyone. I simply kept my head down and tried to do my work. But I felt totally out of place.

  Basketball was my refuge. I loved playing, and I loved hanging out with my teammates, especially Donte, who was my closest friend. Regardless of what my cousin had said, I trusted Donte and I respected his ability as a basketball player. Like everyone else on the team, he seemed happy that I had joined their ranks.

  We all thought it would be a great season. It certainly started out that way. In the first game I played for Mesa, I was astounded to see such a big crowd, with so many screaming people. Our student section chanted my name, which helped alleviate some of my nervousness. In the locker room I was so excited that I couldn’t sit still. I paced around the room, exchanging high fives with my teammates. It had been a long time since I had played a real basketball game, and many of the old emotions that fueled my play back in the Congo—the anger and the need to prove myself—began bubbling up inside. I took a deep breath, tried to calm myself. When it came time to run out onto the court for warmups, though, the anger subsided, and in its place was pure joy. I looked into the stands, and there I saw students not only cheering, but also holding up signs, some of which said, “Welcome to Mesa High, the Congo Kid.”

  I smiled and waved. Maybe this was home, after all.

  We won that game and I played pretty well: eight points, five blocked shots, and more than ten rebounds. I was a little rougher around the edges than some of the other guys, but I was also bigger and more athletic, which I used to my advantage. After the game, when we got home, my cousin took me straight to our room. He congratulated me on the way I had played, but also turned the night into something negative.

  “Yeah, brother, they told me you were no good . . . a waste . . . but you just proved these people wrong,” he said, gesturing toward the bedroom door (and presumably the people on the other side). “They don’t believe in you. I do. And together we’re going to make it.”

  By the middle of December things were going really well at school and on the basketball court. Our team was winning games and I was playing well and having a lot of fun. Donte was our senior star and getting some Division I offers, which didn’t bother me in the least. He had earned it. Moreover, he never let it go to his head.

  “Bro, next year I’ll be gone and everything is going to be in your hands,” he said to me. “And then maybe we can play together again in college.”

  This was my dream; unfortunately, reality interfered, as the situation at home continued to deteriorate. Based on what I saw and some of the things that Patrick said, I believe my cousin felt a sense of entitlement for bringing me to Arizona; he considered my services as a basketball player to be a commodity worthy of compensation—and he was the one to be compensated. In exchange for delivering a 6-foot-8 African basketball player to the Blitzes, Patrick seemed to expect free room and board and, eventually, a piece of whatever I might earn.

  I had even heard Patrick telling his girlfriend on Skype that he had given the Blitzes a good player, and it was their job—not his—to take care of me.

  After several months of tension, if not outright fighting, Terry gave my cousin an ultimatum: get a job or get out of the house. He chose to leave.

  “And I’m taking Blondy with me,” he said.

  I was not present at the time. I was at school getting ready for a game against Hamilton High. But Terry and Laurie told me everything later. Terry had argued with Patrick, mainly because he was worried about me. Terry knew that Patrick had no place to go, and was worried about what would become of me if I left with him.

  “Blondy is staying here,” Terry said. “He’s doing well in school and with basketball. He has friends and he is like our son. He belongs in this house.”

  But Patrick was not easily dissuaded.

  “You should remember something,” he said. Then he left the room for a moment, before returning with my guardianship papers. “He is my cousin and I am his guardian and I am taking him with me,” Patrick said, waving the papers in Terry’s face. “And you can’t do anything about it.”

  That night, while I was sitting in the stands watching the junior varsity game with my teammates, getting psyched up to play, Patrick called me on my cell phone and told me that we were getting kicked out of the house, and that we’d need to look for another place to live. I was shocked and devastated. I went into the locker room and started crying, thinking about the possibility of being homeless again. I’d known that feeling in the Congo; I thought it would never happen in America. Especially after I had been taken in by such a wonderful family.

  After the game Coach Brandon took me home. It was a rainy night. I was so nervous. One thought kept going through my head on the way home: do I rebel against my cousin or my new family? I didn’t know what to do.

  Patrick was my guardian, so there wasn’t much anyone could do. I could barely understand what was happening and had to rely on my cousin’s interpretation, which basically boiled down to this: “They don’t want us here anymore.”

  The night we moved out I cried like a child. This family had been so kind to me: Why would they be kicking us out? It made no sense. I was particularly confused by the way the Blitzes acted as Patrick and I packed our gear and prepared to leave. They didn’t seem angry; they were filled with sadness. Terry said almost nothing, but his eyes were red and swollen. And Laurie? As I walked into the living room with my bags—bags filled with clothing the Blitzes had bought for me—Laurie wrapped her arms around me and pulled me close. With her voice catching and her eyes filled with tears, she held me tightly, just like my mother used to do.

  “I love you, Blondy,” she whispered.

  “I love you, too, Laurie.”

  I wanted to be strong, but I was filled with self-pity and confusion. Why couldn’t they work things out, my African family and my American fam
ily? Why did it have to end this way? I did not want to leave, but I had no choice but to follow my cousin. I was seventeen years old; in a very real sense, he owned me.

  I later found out that Terry had given Patrick $300 shortly before we left, in case we needed a hotel room for a day or two. But Patrick had already made arrangements. He had reached out to Joe Ward, my AAU coach, and given him a very one-sided version of why and how things had deteriorated with the Blitzes. Coach Ward was both sympathetic to my plight and angry with both my cousin and the Blitzes. Like me, I guess, he just wanted everyone to get along. Coach Ward had less room than the Blitzes, but he said we could stay with him for as long as we needed—presumably, until Patrick finally landed that elusive job that would allow him to rent an apartment for the two of us. That night, as Patrick and I settled into a small room that once belonged to Coach Ward’s daughter, I got a text message from Terry Blitz.

  “I know it is hard for you to leave us right now,” he wrote. “It’s hard for us, too. I did not have any choice but to let you go. But please . . . I am asking you to be strong and to go to school tomorrow.”

  I texted back with a single word: “Okay.”

  Coach Ward opened his home to us, but that arrangement also went sour almost immediately, as Patrick’s fondness for staying up late and sleeping all day—and even inviting friends over to the house without asking permission—irritated Mr. Ward enormously. There was only one spare bed, and of course Patrick took it. He made me sleep on the floor despite the fact that he had no obligations in the morning, while I had school and basketball practice. Very quickly, Mr. Ward, who took shit from nobody, came to understand why the Blitzes had grown so frustrated.

  Thankfully, Coach Ward knew that I was not the problem, so he called Terry and Laurie Blitz and asked them to take me back in. They agreed, under one condition: Patrick could not be part of the deal. I also spoke with Terry and Laurie. I told them I wanted to come home (and indeed, I had come to think of their home as my home, and of their family as my family). With or without my cousin.

  I told Patrick what was happening, and surprisingly, he agreed to these terms, albeit with a tone of sarcasm, if not tyranny.

  “Okay, go live with them,” he said. “But you won’t be there long. I’m going to get a job and an apartment, and then you will come and live with me, where you belong.”

  I did not want to fight with him. I just wanted to go home.

  “Fine, Patrick,” I said. “Whatever you say.”

  In late December, shortly before Christmas, I returned to the Blitz home, where I was welcomed once again with warmth and kindness, and I began to realize with utter clarity the truth of the situation. These were good people; my cousin was the problem.

  Periodically, Patrick would call the administration at Mesa and threaten to prevent me from playing on the basketball team. I did not understand how or why he would do this, but apparently, as my guardian, it was within his power. Eventually he relented and agreed not to get in the way of my basketball career, so I was allowed to play. Patrick even showed up at my games, which was extremely awkward and confusing. The first time I played after he had agreed to stop threatening the coaches and administration, Patrick was sitting in the stands, cheering and applauding like everyone else. As I went through warmups, I looked up at him. Our eyes met. He nodded and tapped his heart, as if to say, “I love you.” I nodded and pointed back at him. “I love you, too.”

  And I did love him. It was all just so . . . complicated. I will always appreciate that Patrick tried to help me, even if his motives were suspect and his methods questionable. He did want me to be successful; and maybe, on some level, he really did believe all that nonsense about only being able to trust a blood relative. But the thing is, he was wrong. Dead wrong. It just took me a while to figure it out.

  A SHORT TIME LATER, in early January of 2009, just as Mesa High was getting into the thick of its conference basketball season, and I was beginning to get some interest from college coaches, Patrick called me on the phone. I was surprised to hear from him. And apprehensive. After some initial sadness and guilt, especially during the Christmas season, I had begun to feel comfortable with the separation from my cousin. He was no longer micromanaging my life, nor infuriating everyone around us with his laziness and lack of ambition. Did I feel sorry for him? Of course I did. But he was a grown man and I was just a high school student; I could neither protect him nor make excuses for him; nor should that have been an expectation on his part. I hoped that Patrick would find his way in the world, but I had to detach from him emotionally to concentrate on my own responsibilities.

  It was painful, it was sad, but it was necessary.

  By the time he called me, I had grown accustomed to the idea that Patrick would no longer control my every move. I had cut the cord. But he had other ideas.

  “Blondy, I need to talk to you,” he said. “I’m at the park. Can you come over?”

  Against my better judgment—and because I felt sorry for him—I agreed.

  So we met, and Patrick immediately behaving true to form.

  “Man, I love you,” he said. “You’re the only blood I have in America. We’ve got to stick together no matter what.”

  “I’m sorry, Patrick, but I’m not leaving the Blitzes. That’s my home now. I like where I am.”

  Patrick smiled. “I’ve got something better,” he said. And then he proceeded to tell me that he had brokered a deal with another school.

  “The head coach will give me five thousand dollars and employment if you transfer.”

  I was disgusted. First of all, I did not know whether Patrick was lying. Second, regardless of what Patrick seemed to believe, I was not a commodity to be traded or sold to the highest bidder. Not anymore. The only people I trusted in America were the Blitz family and the people associated with the Mesa basketball program. I wasn’t about to just walk away from them now, after all they had done for me, just to rescue my cousin.

  Still, I wasn’t sure how to respond. Even though he had lied and manipulated everything about my situation so that it would benefit him, I felt both pity for Patrick, and a sense of responsibility to our shared bloodline. Also, I will admit, I was afraid of him. But I had spent too much of my life in fear; I had spent too much time running and hiding and trying desperately to survive. It was time to stand my ground, consequences be damned. From somewhere deep within, I summoned the courage to confront my cousin. I was bigger and stronger than Patrick, but he was not a small man by any stretch of the imagination (he was about 6-foot-4), and he was older than me. I was intimidated by him despite my physical advantage.

  “Patrick, did you do this for my benefit, or for your own benefit?”

  He seemed taken aback by this response, at first expressing surprise, and then hurt.

  “Blondy, what are you talking about? We are brothers. I told you I would fix this situation, and now we are good.”

  “Cousin, I love you to death,” I said. “But it’s not fair for you to go behind my back trying to sell me to other schools.”

  Patrick stared at me. Rather than let him speak, I continued.

  “You are the only blood family I have here in America. But I just cannot do this. I love my teammates, my coaches, my new family, and my school, so I really cannot leave for something unsure. I had a very hard time moving from place to place with you. I was embarrassed going to school for a while. Now my situation is stabilized and you want me to leave again? No! I cannot! If you really care about me, you would let me stay with the Blitzes so that I can get my education and hopefully go to college.”

  Patrick said nothing. He just glared at me, his eyes narrowing as he took it all in. I could see the anger rising; I could almost feel his blood boiling. Suddenly, without saying a word, he lunged forward and punched me in the face. I had no time to react or sidestep the blow in any way. I fell to one knee as blood gushed from my nose and the lights flickered in my brain. I stayed on the ground, stunned and disoriented,
waiting for everything to come back into focus.

  Patrick took another step forward and stood over me.

  “You’re going to trust these white people over me?” he shouted. “I’m your guardian. I brought you to America! You will do what I tell you to do!”

  I looked up at him, saw his hands balled into fists, his jaw clenched in fury. He looked like he wanted to kill me. Rather than allow him to beat me without a fight, I slowly rose to my feet. I tried to make myself as big as possible, like an animal in the wild, and then I looked right into his eyes. They were the eyes of a coward . . . a bully.

  “No,” I said. “I am not your dog. You cannot tell me what to do.”

  Patrick’s arms dropped to his side. He eyes softened into something less menacing, something almost fearful. Finally, he laughed.

  “We’ll see,” he said, and then he turned and walked away.

  I did not know, as his silhouette faded into the night, if I would ever see him again. And frankly, I hoped that I would not.

  CHAPTER 14

  * * *

  Patrick was nothing if not relentless. Two days later he showed up at school and tried unsuccessfully to have me removed under his supervision, even though my mother and my uncle had gotten involved from the Congo and told Patrick to leave me alone since I was happy with my new family. And the school administration had determined that since I was almost a legal adult anyway, there was no benefit to disrupting everything and forcing me into a living arrangement that would be short-lived.

  While Patrick was at the school office trying to take me out of school, Coach Brandon came to my class to alert me as to what was going on. I was so angry that I wanted to see Patrick and possibly knock him out. I walked to the school offices and went straight to the athletic director’s office, where Patrick was waiting. My facial expression said it all. I was ready for anything. I interrupted their conversation as soon I walked into the office, shouting in broken English, “I am not leaving the school no matter what, Patrick! You are not my father or my mother. You fucking leave me alone!”